With a dissertation proposal due yesterday and only two weeks until exams, my knitting exile continued last week as I was forced to dedicate all free time to studying. I spent my days floundering helplessly in a sea of paperwork and despairing at the lack of woolly things in my life; willing the weekend to arrive when I would at least be allowed a break to venture out to Yarn Shop Day.

Luckily, my week would not be completely devoid of all things woolly: it just wasn’t going to come in the conventional form. Instead of spending hours working on a knitting project stitch by stitch, I economised and spent only an hour and a half on Thursday evening getting this amazing tattoo done. It may have taken only a fraction of the time that it might have taken to knit a pair of socks or mittens, but the end result is just as beautiful albeit in a completely different way.

Satuday was Yarn Shop Day: a day dedicated to celebrating everything that’s great about your local bricks-and-mortar yarn shop. Now in it’s third year, the day is promoted by Let’s Knit magazine as a campaign to support independent knitting shops across the UK.